[The Panther]

JM says he never checks email and the only good way to get a hold of him is to PM him on QT3. He did not say how often he checks that. He also does not play Dominions anymore. This could cause trouble and delays when something happens to the game. It makes backups a problem unless it is done automatically on the host server. I have found PBEM to be easier to recover from incidents and far more stable than TCP/IP. I have had several TCP/IP games crash permanently for various reasons but never have I had a PBEM game crash unrecoverably.

Using anonymous players, the game would likely have to be started under PBEM for the first turn to make sure the right people put in for the right nation. There is typically a lot of care and feeding for that first turn. Perhaps Pasha could get us going at the start and we could then switch over to JM's server when the game had stablized. With 17 players, PBEM does get very tedious for the hosting agent.

But for the players, PBEM is much easier than TCP/IP in that you don't have to periodically check the server to find if there is a new turn. All you have to do is check your email, which most people do routinely anyway. Myself, I far prefer PBEM when playing.